War for Talent?
February 14, 2008 by Raj Sheelvant
Research by McKinsey titled Making Talent a Strategy Priority finds a contradicting trend (This is an extension to their initial paper in 1997 titled ‘War For Talent’). While there is a rising acknowledgement by the executive that in this globalized knowledge economy, the demand for right ‘talent’ far exceeds the existing supply leading to ‘war for talent’ and HR needs to play an important role in talent management. At the same time this research confirms the idea that HR’s influence within the organization is declining.
Study finds that “Three external factors—demographic change, globalization, and the rise of the knowledge worker—are forcing organizations to take talent more seriously. But the threats don’t come solely from the outside; companies themselves have made matters worse. Internal problem like managers who are too ready to treat talent in a reactive, knee-jerk manner—say, by hiring additional sales and marketing people only when new products take off.”
For the executives that want to chalk out a growth plan for the next 5-10 years, they need a solid support from HR to provide right talent resource at the right time. If less than two third HR directors report to the CEO directly (That’s what the study finds), I suspect far less HR directors are invited to the business strategy planning session. With no visibility into the company’s strategic growth there is no way HR can fulfill its role to manage talent in the hyper competitive globalized environment. This begs an important question. With most organizations in a reactive mode (as the paper suggests) when it comes to talent management, is there really a ‘War’ on talent. Remember a ‘War’ has a strategic element to it (read Art of War by Sun Tzu). I suspect currently organizations are only involved in day to day firefighting mode.
Only when the organizations let the HR partake in the business strategy we will see a real ‘War for Talent’ unfolds.
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